Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

MARA

He texted Sunday morning.

Not about bio. There was no bio reason to text anymore — the exam was Tuesday, the review was done, I'd given him everything he needed. But my phone buzzed at ten AM and his name was on the screen and I looked at it for a long time before opening it.

did I do something wrong

Four words. No punctuation at the end, which meant he'd typed it fast, without his usual care. I put the phone down and made coffee and came back and it was still there.

I typed: you didn't do anything wrong.

He replied immediately: you're lying.

I put the phone face-down again. My mother was at the table with her own coffee and her crossword and she didn't look up but I could tell she was aware of every move I was making because she was my mother and that was her particular talent.

"You want to talk about it," she said, not looking up.

"No."

"Okay." She filled in a word. "He texted?"

"Mom."

"I'm just asking."

"Yes. He texted."

"And you're doing the thing."

I looked at her. "What thing."

She set her pen down. "The thing where something scares you so you close up before it can hurt you." She said it without judgment, just fact, the way she said most true things. "You've been doing it since middle school. It's very efficient and it costs you things."

I looked at my coffee.

"I saw something," I said. "Thursday. At school. It was probably nothing."

"Did you ask him about it?"

"No."

"Why not?"

I didn't answer. She picked her pen back up. "That's the thing," she said simply, and went back to her crossword.

I picked up my phone and stared at the conversation. His last message sat there — you're lying — patient and unmoving and more accurate than I wanted it to be.

I typed and deleted four different responses. Finally I sent: I need a few days. It's not about you.

Which was both true and completely untrue.

He read it. The check marks went blue. He didn't reply, and somehow that was worse than if he'd pushed back.

Monday I went to school and moved through it with the focused efficiency I'd perfected over two years. Head down, schedule tight, one thing at a time. I did not go near the gym corridor. I sat at my corner table at lunch and Jess came and didn't ask questions, just sat with me, which was one of the things I valued most about her.

"You look terrible," she said.

"Thank you."

"Not like, aesthetically. Just around the eyes. You didn't sleep."

"I slept fine."

"Mara."

"Jess."

She ate her lunch. I moved mine around my tray. After a while she said, carefully, "He was looking for you this morning."

My pen stopped on the page. "Where."

"Near the lab. Before first period. He stood there for a while." She paused. "He looked like you do right now. Around the eyes."

I stared at my notebook. There was a diagram half-drawn on the page, the enzyme kinetics one I'd used to teach him three weeks ago, and I had no memory of drawing it.

"I saw him with Maya Chen," I said. "Thursday. In the gym corridor."

Jess was quiet for a second. "Doing what."

"Talking. She had her hand on his arm. He was laughing."

Another silence. "That's it?"

"That's it."

Jess set her fork down in the careful way she did when she was choosing her words. "Okay. I'm going to say something and I need you to hear it without getting defensive."

"I hate when conversations start like that."

"I know. Maya Chen is on the spirit committee with Dex. They've been planning the winter formal for six weeks. Cole has been helping because Dex roped him into it and Cole can't say no to Dex about anything. She's been talking to every guy on the team." She picked her fork back up. "I know this because I was also roped into the spirit committee and I've been to three meetings."

I looked at her.

"You could have just asked him," she said. Not unkindly. Just true.

The bell rang. I gathered my things and walked to AP English and sat in my seat and stared at the board while Mrs. Okafor talked about narrative distance and I thought about how good I was at creating it. How automatic. How the moment something started to matter I found a reason to step back and call it self-preservation when really it was just fear with a better name.

After school I sat in the library for an hour not reading. At four-thirty I packed up and walked to the gym corridor.

He wasn't there. Of course he wasn't there. I didn't know what I'd expected.

I stood in the empty corridor for a moment feeling faintly ridiculous, then took out my phone.

I typed: I'm sorry about the last few days. Can we talk after your exam tomorrow?

I stared at it. Sent it before I could rewrite it into something safer.

Three minutes passed. Five. I was almost to the front doors when the phone buzzed.

Yeah. find me after.

Two words. Where he usually gave more. I had done that, shaved him down to two words, and the knowledge of it sat uncomfortably in my chest the whole walk home.

I did my homework. I helped with dinner. I went to bed at eleven and lay in the dark and thought about the look on his face Saturday when I'd said good luck like a goodbye.

I thought about what my mother had said.

It costs you things.

I was aware of that. I'd always been aware of that. Knowing it and doing something about it had always been the distance I couldn't close.

Tomorrow, I thought.

Tomorrow I'd close it.

I wasn't sure I believed myself. But it was the best I had.